[OOM] Playing the Game, Part 4

[zenigatcha]

[ A simple(?) burglary(?) goes awry.
Warning for canon-typical violence, gun violence, blood and injury.]

Late at night, the door opens with a creak.

Zenigata leaves a bloody handprint on the doorframe, as he staggers a bit on the entry to the bar, blood running down from his belly and staining both pantlegs. He's moving, if unwell and unsteady on his feet. One hand keeps to his belly, while the other occasionally uses a chair or even a patron as a hand hold as he tries to get to the medical office, leaving a messy trail behind him.

"Somebody--" he says to whoever's there to listen. A person, a rat, doesn't matter. "Somebody find Sunshine, if she's here."

He will get to the infirmary, one way or the other, and help will find him. He knows it will. Milliways is always full of helpful people -- sometimes he's even one of them. Of course, someone will be here when he needs them... right?


~~~~


Zenigata spends a few hours resting in the medical bay, dozing fitfully. It's an unrestful sleep, but he's trying. It was a long day, he got shot, now he's here. But he's alive, and he's going to be okay. That's worth something at least. Still, he wakes frequently, if not for long. He's just so tired...


~~~~~


Come next morning, Zenigata has found his way to the kitchen stoop, with a hot mug of coffee in hand and a lot on his mind.  





[ Sunshine will be there to help, that's already been arranged, but feel free to visit him after the hubbub while he rests up under doctor's orders, or later when he's made it to the next morning alive.  Please tag under the appropriate Zenigata tag so i can keep timelines somewhat straight with some millitime goodness still about.]

Comments

Late Evening

[zenigatcha]

Zenigata staggers in, bloody and bruised.

Re: Late Evening

[sunbaked_baker]

Sunshine was in the kitchen, researching recipes, when the waitrat Holly came in squeaking loudly for her attention. The day had been a bright one, spent outside and soaking in every last bit of it. Sunlight and time were allowing her mind distance from the other night. But this was alarm in Holly's tone. Rae tucked away her recipe box before following, curious and wary.

To see a bloody Zenigata, almost to the infirmary door.

Nope. Not today.

Though her approach is swift, she makes sure to come from an angle so he can see her coming, "Zenigata, what have you gotten yourself into?" she asks, moving without hesitation to support his side and bear up his weight, disregarding the blood. The moment she touches him, though, her power slams through the points of contact - more a torrential flood of warmth than sinking into a warm bath - and begin to seek out the man's injuries.

[zenigatcha]

"Oh, just a home burglary gone awry," Zenigata says, voice a little wavery. "You know how it goes. Come home from a long night of work, somebody's ransacking your apartment..."

The warmth flooding him nearly bowls him over, it comes on so hard and fast, searing through him. He wants to just lay down and sleep now, but that is a terrible idea and he knows it. Even now he tries to force himself upright, to not lean heavily on Sunshine as she helps him toward the infirmary.

"I know you can heal-- but--" he doesn't know what the limits are. She helped with his ears and that scrape around his ankle, but that's something else.

[sunbaked_baker]

Rae had steadfastly not been thinking of Emcee.

"Oh, I've helped keep people more perforated than you alive," she assures him with an attempt at a light tone, bringing him towards the nearest bed. "I can get those bullets out, and repair the tissue damage..."

[zenigatcha]

"Oh, good. Well, we've got time," Zenigata says before they push into the infirmary proper. "It's gut shots. They take forever to kill you so long nothing tore open the intestine or hit a kidney... or any other... vital organ."

Maybe he should stop talking.

"I'd know if it were a kidney shot, though. I wouldn't be upright."

He should really stop talking.

[sunbaked_baker]

"That's a good sign then, huh," she says, jaw set as she helps him gingerly onto the infirmary bed. She doesn't lose contact with him, however, holding on and letting her power flow through in slow, thick whorls of warmth, knitting together torn tissue, blood vessels, pushing the embedded bullets back towards the surface with as little pain as she can manage.

"You've lost a lot of blood, though." To her Dark Sight, his shadows are red-grey, with deeper red edges frizzled by pain.

[zenigatcha]

"Not enough to kill me," Zenigata says with confidence. "Only been bleeding a couple of minutes."

He really shouldn't be this flippant, but there's warmth flooding him and blood loss affecting his thought processes, shock set in.

Once he has something to lean on, he simply drops his long coat to the floor, and then sits down on the bed, unbuttoning his shirt and loosening his tie.

"You're amazing," he says as each button come undone under clumsy fingers. "You know that, right? S'why Lupin kept trying to make something happen. He wants me to have nice things. Nice women. Hah!"

Shock has definitely set in, because he sure is disoriented.

[sunbaked_baker]

"Blood loss can kill a lot faster than a couple of minutes," Rae remarks, with a tone suggesting she knows better than to be comforted by his attitude. Her magic is warm, the bone-deep warmth of a blazing summer day on the beach, but he needs physical warmth as well. Blankets. She helps him with his shirt, blood soaked through the cloth but not fully obscuring the holes in it. "There's bits of your shirt pushed in there that'll have to come out with the bullets. I can get them, but fair warning, it'll hurt."

As though he didn't know that already, well done Sunshine, you moron.

"Lupin seems to have a disconnection with the idea of women as friends," Rae remarks, rather than addressing the idea of being romantically involved with Zenigata, even as she is helping him undress on a bed.

[zenigatcha]

"He's actually much better than he used to be," Zenigata replies. "Used to just be --- a rat faced little garage man. Absolute-- mmm. Fuckboy. That's the term."

Zenigata is not always Hip to the Slang. But he got that right, at least.

"We were both terrible people when we started out, he say, looking down; he's a furry man with a generous amount of hair from chest to navel and then starting again beneath it. It's gotten matted down with blood now, glued to his skin.

"Go ahead," he says. "I've had bullets dug out of me before."

There's a scar over his heart that speaks to a very near miss with a bullet, too.

[sunbaked_baker]

"Hm," Rae murmurs, focusing on the mental feel of the bullets and tiny torn bits of fabric inching their way, trying to keep them from snagging on the torn flesh around them on their way out. She is remarkably less skittish about other people's blood when she isn't the one who caused the bleeding, and isn't shy about him being shirtless, either. "Probably for the best I didn't meet him before, then."

"Gonna need you to lay back. Sitting up like that is compressing the..." there's no softer way to say 'bullet holes,' is there? "... it's making the way out more complicated." Once he's not leaning forward, she can make more progress without having to fight compressed and torn tissue.

"One's out."

[zenigatcha]

"You would have hated us," Zenigata agreed with a strangely chipper smile. He loves all these thieving idiots, every last one of them. "We're all so much better than we were then. Life beat the selfishness out of me. Lupin tamed three killers. Even he... even he matured."

He lays back without protest; though it does earn some messy spurts of blood as tissue protests and passages are cleared for flow, a rivulet of blood snaking down his side, over several more scars on his body.

Zenigata has never known a peaceful life. He chose it, though, and that's something he won't give up.

"--Should put my feet up," he says as he rests. "Elevate. Feet. Keeps blood in the right places. Brain."

[sunbaked_baker]

Sunshine's magic finds those broken vessels as the bullet and tiny scrap of sodden cloth come free and fall into her hand, the golden whorls of power knitting them back together. She can't do anything about the blood he has already lost, but she can damn well make sure he keeps ahold of what he has.

At least in this case, he has plenty of vitality to allow him to heal, even if they're both going to be wiped out after. She is not letting herself think too much of Emcee.

"So this is what is takes for the great Zenigata Koichi to lean back and put his feet up, huh?" she remarks, keeping her tone light as she spares a trickle of attention to float the pillows from the other beds so he has something to put his feet up on. The second bullet is coming much faster, the torn tissues and split blood vessels beginning to knit themselves back together after it passes towards the surface.

Dead of Night

[zenigatcha]

Zenigata rests, if poorly, in the infirmary.

Re: Dead of Night

[starrydome]

Elrond occasionally lends a hand at the Infirmary. As there is a patient, he has decided to spend the night here, checking in on him occasionally.

His footfall is light and his movements are calm, as he looks in on the patient, Zenigata.

He is dressed in long, silvery grey robes and his long hair is pulled back. Practically.

[zenigatcha]

Recovering from shock, Zenigata sleeps poorly. Fainted is more like it, but he rouses on occasion. Still pale from blood loss -- though Sunshine's magic has helped him begin to recover. Feet still elevated, covered in a warm blanket.

When he wakes and sees someone he doesn't recognize, every cop instinct has him tense before he remembers where he's at.

"H--hello?"

[starrydome]

"Greetings," Elrond says in a low, calming voice.

"I am a healer here. I could hear that you might be awake and I came to see if there is anything you need?"

[zenigatcha]

Zenigata squints a little like he's trying to place the man, before he relaxes a little. He doesn't know him, hasn't met him, but he's not brandishing a weapon and he's in Milliway's. It's fine.

"Fluids," he finally says. "I haven't-- had anything."

He's past the worst of the shock, so getting a drink won't affect him adversely at this point.

[starrydome]

There's a pitcher of water off to the side, so Routing walls over and pours a glass for the Man.

The water is cool and he adds a drinking straw before moving close.

"Careful," he says, ready to support him if during up is too much,too soon.

[zenigatcha]

Zenigata props himself up -- to take the drink, straw accepted. He knows better than to try and manage too much dexterous movement right now.

"Thanks," he rasps, voice improving between sips. "S'better."

[starrydome]

"Are you in any pain?" Elrond asks quietly.

Up close, he looks less human. Leaf shaped ears, eyes lit by the light of stars.

[zenigatcha]

The eyes, that's a trick of the light-- somehow. The ears? No, definitely not.

"No, I'm-- just a little bit achy," Zenigata says, still puzzling over the new features. "...what's your name?"

[starrydome]

"Forgive me. My name is Elrond Half-elven."

He sits down next to the bed, so it is easy for Zenigata to see his face, even in the dim light.

[zenigatcha]

That's... an interesting name, to say the least. However, Zenigata is so disconnected from popular culture he'd have to be reminded of anything but the most glaring examples. So Elond is just... a half elf. Cool. His best mate here has sunlight in her skin and he saw a mermaid nun ascend to heaven. Why not?

"Zenigata Koichi," Zenigata replied. "Of Interpol, but I'm not exactly in my jurisdiction."

[starrydome]

"Which address do you prefer?" Elrond asks.

He is making mental notes of the Man's colour and breathing. The way he talks. The small movements he makes.

Morning Misery

[zenigatcha]

Zenigata can be found at the kitchen stoop.